“But I lost the fight.”
“Yeah, but you had it. My theory is that most people think other people are just one thing. Like, everyone says Frannie is so nice, and that settles her for them. They think you’re tough.”
“I am,” Mikey said.
“Yeah, but—you know what I mean. Everybody’s more than just one thing, I mean.”
Mikey swallowed her mouthful of casserole and she pointed out the obvious to Margalo. “You’re not most people.”
“That’s right.”
Mikey continued thinking about her friend. “But I am sort of an extreme, aren’t I? And so’s Frannie, but you’re in the middle. You’re sort of everything. Do you do that on purpose?” she asked, with admiration. “So nobody can figure you out or know what you’re really like?”
“Except, you do,” Margalo acknowledged.
“That’s right,” Mikey agreed, then admitted, “at least, mostly.” She seized the opportunity to ask, “Are you coming with me to see Mr. Saunders?”
“I guess I better. If I don’t, I’ll never find out this new plan of yours.” Margalo peeled her orange, and only then did she offer Mikey an Oreo, to dip into her scoop of vanilla ice cream.
“That’s because people keep interrupting us, now that we’re so popular,” Mikey said, and laughed.
“We’ll just have to get back on their bad sides again,” Margalo said, and grinned. “I bet we can. I bet we could do it in two days. I bet, if Heather hadn’t been so dumb, we could have gotten back to being just as unpopular as we were before by the end of the day today.”
Frannie joined them, so that they could all go to seminar, and of course she wanted to go with them to the appointment. “Don’t tell me anything more, Mikey. I want to be surprised,” Frannie said.
* * *
Mr. Sàunders wasn’t surprised to see Mikey enter his office with a couple of henchpersons at her side. “Hello, girls,” he greeted them warily. “Mikey.”
“Here’s the idea,” Mikey said. “I want to sell food at the eighth-grade dance.”
Mr. Saunders didn’t miss a beat. “What would your class need more money for?”
“Not for the class,” Mikey said. “For me. And Margalo; she’s my partner. I want you to give me the concession.”
Mr. Saunders leaned back in his chair, studying her.
“Or I’ll rent it from the school,” Mikey suggested. “Like they do at a stadium, or a circus.”
Mr. Saunders put his fingers together and looked at Mikey over the top of his finger tent. “I’m not sure that it’s appropriate to use school events for private profit,” he said.
“Are you sure it’s not appropriate?” Mikey asked.
“No.” He shook his head, and repeated himself. “No.”
“Because if it turns out to be, I could always set up outside the building,” Mikey offered.
“You’d still be on school property.”
“Or on the sidewalk,” Mikey said, considering this new idea. “I could do that, and then I could sell to civilians, passersby, too, couldn’t I? I’m thinking of some kind of a booth, with a counter, and wheels. It could go anywhere.”
“What food are you thinking of selling?” Mr. Saunders asked. “Cookies, of course.”
“Maybe individual pizzas; we could heat them in toaster ovens. Pizza is always popular. Sandwiches, probably, too. The refreshments committee will have chips and sodas, inside, that kind of junk food, so I’m not going to do drinks.”
“Theirs will be free of charge,” Mr. Saunders pointed out.
“Mine will taste good,” Mikey pointed out.
Then there was a brief silence. Mr. Saunders nodded his head, once, briskly, and said, “All right, Mikey. Unless there is some reason, in the fire code or the school building usage rules, I see no problem.”
“Good,” Mikey said. “Because I’m thinking I might keep the booth, and set up a concession stand during games.”
Mr. Saunders looked up quickly.
“That would be good publicity for the school, wouldn’t it, Mr. Saunders?” Margalo remarked, as if she really was a partner and had already talked all of this over with Mikey. “Parents are always impressed when kids do something on their own, don’t you think?”
“We’ll see,” Mr. Saunders said, then, “I’ll see what I can do.” He rose from his seat and said, “I’ll do my best for you, Mikey.”
“That’s good enough for me, Mr. Saunders,” Mikey said, formally, almost like reaching across the desk for the handshake closing a real business deal.
But Margalo was seized by inspiration. Inspiration got its big, long-fingered hands on her chest and just squeezed the words up into her throat, whispering in her ear that the timing was too perfect to be missed. “Did you want to ask Mr. Saunders about tennis?” she asked Mikey.
Now Mikey was surprised, but Margalo noticed that Mr. Saunders still wasn’t.
“The tennis team,” he guessed. “Ask me about playing on the West tennis team this spring,” he guessed.
“You could talk to her coach at the Y,” Margalo suggested.
“And what makes you think I haven’t already done that?” he asked.
Margalo knew when to quit. She quit.
They were out of there, and on their way to seminar, with no time for Margalo to get the details of this concession plan out of Mikey, so that she could begin the changes that would make it really good.
* * *
They had to wait for the bus ride home to talk. By then, Margalo had had time to think, and do the math, and get some hopes up. “Frannie will tell people about the concession booth,” she said. “Everybody will want to be included.”
“I don’t want everyone included,” Mikey groused from the window seat. “I don’t want any of them.” Margalo couldn’t expect her to be cheerful, not this afternoon. Her free throws still sucked, and she wasn’t nearly tall enough for jump shots. Hop shots was more like it. Basketball was hard.
“But you want some other people, sometimes. Like, to sell stuff, and to keep the pizzas coming hot. Who’s going to prepare them, have you thought of that? You’ll be busy. And you’ll probably stink big time as a salesperson.”
“You’ve been thinking about this,” Mikey complained.
“Of course, I have. I’m a partner. What does that mean, Mikey?”
“It means you do half the work. And you have to get Aurora to take us to Sam’s Club for my shopping. Dad’ll loan me seed money, I’m pretty sure of that. Or Mom will; it won’t be much, and after that we’ll be able to cover our own expenses. Mostly it means you’ll have to run everything during the tennis season.”
“Does it mean I get half the money?” Margalo asked.
“Half the profits.”
“Because you said you could make fifty dollars a gross, didn’t you?”
“That was with cost rounded up, and selling for fifty cents apiece. I plan to charge a dollar. At a dollar a cookie, I figure, we’d make $122.40 a gross. In profits. Half for each of us.”
“For California,” Margalo said. This was math she could do in her head, dividing the price of the plane ticket—$407, she remembered that—by $60 a sale—maybe less but maybe more. “That’s, like, only seven sales. That’s, like, the dance and there are more than six home games in the spring sports season and I can buy my own plane ticket.”
“That’s what I figure,” Mikey said. She didn’t need Margalo saying “thank you.”
“I signed up for the baby-sitting course, but it doesn’t start until January,” Margalo told Mikey. She didn’t have to say it out loud: “You were right, there are things I can do.” Mikey could figure that out without being told.
They bounced along, until Mikey said, “I thought Hadrian might do some advertising posters,” and Margalo said, “What if, instead of trying to make pizzas you did something like—sausages in biscuits? Like Burger King breakfasts, with an electric frying pan?”
“What are you now, the head chef, too?” Mikey d
emanded. “I’ll do the food, and you can take care of the rest.”
“I thought you said partners,” Margalo said. “It was only a suggestion. You don’t have to do anything just because I suggest it. But if I’m a partner, I might have an idea that you might listen to. Because, otherwise, how can I be good enough to be a partner?”
“Meatballs!” Mikey cried. “Toothpicks!”
It didn’t make any sense to Margalo, unless they were new cuss words Mikey was trying out. Meatballs was a noncontender, she thought, but toothpicks was possible. “I am good enough to be a partner,” she pointed out.
“That’s why I asked you,” Mikey said.
“You didn’t ask.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You actually need me, so you better be nice to me.”
“I’m making you half of my business, aren’t I?”
“That’s so I can go to California with you.”
“I’m being your friend, aren’t I? Zut! Margalo. Alors! What more do you want?”
Margalo had her answer ready. “I want you to help me with math. So we can both be on high honor roll. And I’ll help you with spelling and English.” Then she quickly changed the subject. “Are we going to name the business?”
“Why would we—?” Mikey stopped. Thought. “Do you think we should?”
“I think it would be good publicity. What name do you think? The Booth?” she suggested. “The Cookie Place? M&M’s?”
“Mikey’s,” Mikey suggested right back.
“Margalo’s,” Margalo suggested back again.
“Mikey’s and Margalo’s,” Mikey said, and Margalo gave that the raspberry. “At least it doesn’t sound like some candy,” Mikey pointed out.
“It needs to be something less like what a couple of kids might think of,” Margalo said. “Something like—like a café?”
“Mikey’s Café?” That sounded dumb, so she tried the other option. “Margalo’s Café?” That sounded just as dumb.
“What about Café Mikey? That’s sort of French, and French is good for food. Café Margalo? Or, Chez, Chez something.”
And they got to it together, at exactly the same time. They said it together, right into one another’s face, it was so perfect. They shrieked it out, laughing, as if they were ordinary, normal seventh-grade girls. “Chez ME!”
Also By Cynthia Voigt
THE BAD GIRLS SERIES
Bad Girls
Bad, Badder, Baddest
Bad Girls in Love
THE TILLERMAN SERIES
Homecoming
Dicey’s Song
A Solitary Blue
The Runner
Come a Stranger
Sons from Afar
Seventeen Against the Dealer
THE KINGDOM SERIES
Jackaroo
On Fortune’s Wheel
The Wings of a Falcon
Elske
OTHER BOOKS
Building Blocks
The Callendar Papers
David and Jonatban
Izzy, Willy-Nilly
Orfe
A Solitary Blue
Tell Me if the Lovers Are Losers
Tree by Leaf
The Vandemark Mummy
When She Hollers
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First Aladdin Paperbacks edition August 2002
Copyright © 2000 by Cynthia Voigt
ALADDIN PAPERBACKS
An imprint of Simon & Schuster
Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Also available in an Atheneum Books for Young Readers hardcover edition.
Book design by David Caplan
The text of this book was set in Janson Text.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Voigt, Cynthia.
It’s not easy being bad / by Cynthia Voigt—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Two unpopular girls try to break into the seventh grade clique system, even though they’re not really sure they want to be popular at all.
ISBN 0-689-82473-4 (hc.)
[1. Popularity—Fiction. 2. Schools—fiction. 3. Individuality—Fiction. 4. Friendship—
Fiction.] I. Title
PZ7.V874 It 2000
[Fic]—dc21 99-087807
ISBN 978-0689-85115-5 (Aladdin pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-4424-8920-2 (eBook)
Cynthia Voigt, It's Not Easy Being Bad
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